156
Ronald E. Cooiis
APPENDICE
William H. Stiles a James Buchanan1)
No. 18 Legation of the TI. States
Vienna, August 26th 1847 2>
Sir
I received a few days since your despatch No. 16 covering a letter from the President to His Imperiai Majesty, the Emperor of Austria, in answer to a comniunication recently received from him amiouncing the decesse of His Royal Highness the Arch-Duke Charles ,3) and your instructions relative to its delivery have been attended to.
A conspiracy of a very serious nature has recently been discovered and suppressed in Rome. On the 15 ih of last month, it appears that a combination of persona, styled the Jesuitico Austro Lambrus [e] hìnian party composed of some cardinals, and officers of the arniy, but mostly of Jesuits and other secret enemies of the Pope, had so arranged, that on the day of the grand fète of the amnesty which was to bave taken place on the 17th Ulto, and when there was to have been a grand display of fireworks, that at this juncture, persona àppointed beforehand were, in the midst of the dense crowd, to raise a false alami, create a pretended conflict between the soldiers and the people; whereupon the officers initiated in the plot were to cry out, that the soldiers were being assassinated, and then to order them to charge and fire upon the people, ... [W]hen by this course they were once masters of the ground, aaà vanquishers of the people, the retrograde party was to seize possession of power, create <a new provisionai government, and cali the Ausfcrians iato the States of the Church under pretence of repressing revolution and bringing the Roman government back into a wiser policy.4) But this conspiracy was fortunately discovered and cominunicated to the Pope, by the pollice of the people and particularly through the efforts of
*) James Buchanan (1791-1868), della Pennsylvania, fu segretario di Stato dal marzo 1845 fino al marzo 1849 nel gabinetto del presidente James Knox Folk (1795-1849); vedi ST. GEORGE LEAKIN SIOUSSAT, James Buchanan, in The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy. a cura di SAMUEL FLAGC BEMIS, New York, 1963 sgg., voi. V, pp. 237-336. Nel 1857 Buchanan divenne il 15 presidente degli S.U.
2) I dispacci originali di Stiles a Buchanan si trovano nei National Archives, Washington, D.C.: Records of the Department of State, Despatches from United States Ministero to Austria, 1838-1906, voi. II.
I) L'arciduca Carlo (1771-1847), il vincitore della battaglia di Wagram, 1809, è morto il 30 marzo 1847 a Vienna. Per le comunicazioni di Buchanan a Stiles vedi National Archives: Records of the Department of State, Diplomane Instructions, Austria, voi. I.
*) Sopra la Congiura del luglio 1847 che Stiles e anche gli altri diplomatici a Vienna tendevano ad accettare come un fatto compiuto invece di una diceria incerta, come era più probabile, efr. GEOBCE F. e JOAN BERKELEY, Italy in the Making, Cambridge, 1932-1940, voi. II, June 1846 to 1 January 1848, pp. 356-359; e CESARE SPBIXÀNZON, Storia del Risorgimento e dell'Unità d'Italia, Milano, 1933-1960, voi. Ili, Dalla elezione di Papa Pio IX (Giugno 1846) all'inizio della guerra d'Indipendenza (Marzo-Aprile 1848), pp. 164-166.